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Were the Cardboard Beds Enough? Tokyo 2020 Olympics
Written by Anoushka Manik
Edited by Aditi Kanchibhatta

I’ve always thought that an event like the Olympics - hosted at a new location each time with thousands flying in to participate - could never be sustainable. However, the initiatives that Tokyo 2020 took almost made me believe sustainability in such a significant event was possible. On a smaller scale, they had reused cardboard to make beds, and medals were made from old smartphones, while the podiums that these achieving athletes stood on were 3D-printed from household plastic waste. We even saw sustainable energy sourcing, reused buildings from the previous Olympics, aluminum torches, and e-transport. On a larger scale, the organizing committee purchased 150% of the needed carbon credits to offset the games’ greenhouse gas emissions. The funds go towards local projects intended to reduce CO2 emissions by a greater amount than the 2020 Games themselves will emit.

As lovely and sustainable as this may sound - the reality is far away from these actions - with the organizers being accused of both greenwashing and superficial sustainability. These Olympics were actually the third-least sustainable Olympics since 1992. The organizers claimed that the eight new venues had been constructed using sustainably sourced timber. However, 225,600 large sheets of plywood were sourced from the fragile jungles of Indonesia and Malaysia – possibly illegally green groups say – to build venues. While the Tokyo 2020 organizers eventually revised their timber sourcing policy in 2019, NGOs said it did not ensure the sustainability or legality of the wood procured. As told by Yuki Sekimoto, RAN’s Tokyo-based spokeswoman, “We know from our field investigations that much of the ‘recycled’ plywood is, in fact, tropical plywood derived from the rainforests of Sarawak, Malaysia, which were most likely used once off-site before being used a couple more times on the Olympic venue, then discarded. This is not a climate positive strategy.”

In addition, the scale of the Olympics is another persistent issue that will only grow in the future. While the games have definitely scaled up and become even more of an international forum in the last few years, and this is more concerning for our environment than anything. The scale of the Olympics makes it virtually impossible to be sustainable. Even with the 2016 Rio Olympics, we saw the deserted Olympic Park.

Even though there were limitations on spectators flying in due to COVID this year, over 11,000 athletes flew into Japan from all across the world to participate in the games, another one of many other environmentally detrimental actions taken this year. A study that David Gogishvili, from the University of Lausanne,conductedon the 2020 Tokyo Olympics reinforces the need for the Olympics to do more in regards to sustainability, saying “the majority of the measures that have been included in this particular Olympics, and the ones that were particularly mediatized, have a more or less superficial effect," "The efforts the International Olympic Committee is making are important but they are limited and not enough. From my perspective, unless they heavily limit the construction aspect and the overall size of the event, they will always be criticized for greenwashing."

At the end of the day, can an event as large as the Olympics ever really be sustainable? It claims to contribute to “world peace,” but is our world really at peace after the damaging effect each Olympic has had on it? Is it still worth having the Olympics every two years when we are well aware of the long-term effects on our planet, in just two weeks of athletes competing for that gold medal? In my opinion, until the Olympics are descaled and significant sustainable steps are taken, it’ll always be viewed as a greenwashing and superficially sustainable event.

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